Refinished Update

Today’s post was delayed and complicated by Saturday’s suspended Mariners/White Sox game.  Once the game was finished on Sunday, all the stats were loaded back to Saturday in the Baseball Reference website we are using.  Which means a straight Sunday update does not include the completion of the suspended games.  

Neither Jamie nor I knew for sure what to do, so we went running off to the Emerald City to see the Wizard.  Not THE Wizard, the one on Whidbey.  The other wise guy, the  “Wizard” of IT.  Who sent us off to find a burnt broomstick while he went behind the curtain and added the stats from Sunday’s finish of the suspended game to Saturday, and recalculated Saturday. 

What I will reveal to you now is just the Sunday stats.  The team scores I report will reflect the play during the  completion of the suspended game, including the stats compiled by players in that Sunday morning action, but the players’ stats as I recite them to you will not.   

You will probably never read any commentary on all the wonderful things that they did Saturday in the last 6 innings of the Seattle/Chicago game. But fear not! The all-knowing, all-seeing EFL database knows what happened, and has included it in today’s standings. 

Finally — this post was also delayed by interruptions:

We didn’t sort out the suspended game stuff until about 10:45 this morning. At noon I had to take my mom to the doctor. This afternoon I’ve been delayed by tasks around the house, and the refusal of the database to update, which I worked around by cutting and pasting the entire post into a new wordpress page, which causes all the formatting to go bland like this.

EFL Standings for 2021

Old Detroit: DNP, 1 – 1.   (44 PA, .325, .364, .600;  8 ip, 4 er, 4.50 ERA).  Marcus Stroman left his game after three innings, apparently hurting both in the transitive sense (hurting the team with 3 ip, 2 er), and the intransitive sense (his grandfather died on Friday).  Ross Stripling continued hisz yeoman’s work (5 ip, 2 er) to help deliver a passable day of pitching.  The hitters, meanwhile, worked out some of their recent bugs and hit with some recently-rare power, with homers from Devers, Bell, and Riley and a triple from Adolis Garcia.      

DC: L, 8 – 9.  (33 PA, .400, .424, .533;  2.3 ip, 3 er, 11.74 ERA).  The Balkan hitters went 12 for 30 at the plate, tacking on a couple of walks, a double and a homer, to make a formidable batting line.  Pete Alonso, recently announced as a Home Run Derby participant, settled for 3 meek singles to lead the Balkan offense.    The pitching however, was more Balky than Balkan.  It comprised three relievers who each allowed an earned run while compiling a mere 2.3 innings  This plus replacements left the Balk with a sieve-like defense, and left DC a slight 0.1 games further from first place.       

Kaline:  W, 6 – 5.  (57 PA, .184, .298, .388;  3.3 ip, 2 er, 5.45 ERA) The Drive also lost some of its forward momentum, not responding to the Wolverine stasis with dynamism or, if I may, drive.  There were three homers, just like the W”s, but diluted over 25% more plate appearances, and without the excitement of any triples.  There were 3 scoreless innings from a trio of relievers, but Rafael Montero is still stinking things up, this time with another sextuple chulk (0.3 innings, 2 er) which turned out to give the White Sox their margin of victory in yesterday’s second game.  The Drive somehow still managed to score 6 runs. (I can imagine, without having the time to check right now, that this is in part due to some of the hitters who did poorly Sunday having their PA suppressed by some of the hitting surpluses the Drive are carrying.)     

11:50 AM:  (BREAK IN THE UPDATE WHILE I TAKE MY MOM TO HER DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENT.  CHECK BACK LATER THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE REST OF THE UPDATE)

1:50 PM: (OK, now I’m back)

Peshastin:  W, 9 – 5. (37 PA, .276, .417,  .621;  1 ip, 0 er , 0.00 ERA).  What a GREAT day at the plate!!  9 (out of 10) Pears reached base safely, 5 more than once.  Haniger homered, Jazz tripled, and Ozzie and Haniger doubled.  Even without much pitching, it was a big won, propelling the Pears past their Flinty opponents and into 4th place, a mere 0.1 games out of third.     Other MLB teams are coveting Haniger.  Will the Mariners trade them?  Will the Pears go along with the deal, too?  The Pears are still solidly in the pennant race, especially with Old Detroit’s recent stumbling and bumbling.    

  Flint Hill: DNP (-4) – 1. (41 PA, .237, .273, .421;  7.7 IP, 3 er , 3.51 ERA)  The offense strikes me as average for MLB this year.  That pitching is above average.  But in both cases, the daily totals from yesterday LOWER the team’s June performance.  This is most notable in the hitting department, where the Tornadoes are batting .265, .333, .385 on the month after Sunday’s games.  The OPS Sunday wasn’t far below the monthly numbers, but it shifted results away from OBP to  SLG.  That’s going to cost a team some runs, carried out over a month. It didn’t cost the Tornados much in the overall pennant race — just 0.3 games lost to the Wolverines — but it allowed the Pears to leave them in the dust.     

Haviland:  W, 4 – 1. (44 PA, .225, .295, .425;  8 ip, 1 er, 1.13 ERA).  Was this Tarik Skubal’s best day of his career?  7 ip, 1 er, 9 strikeouts.  Despite homers from Brandon Lowe and Nelson Cruz, the offense isn’t as impressive, but it didn’t need to be to secure a solid win, gaining as much on the Wolverines as the Tornados lost which, as you probably already figured out, left the Dragons 1.2 games closer to the Tornados, and (just as important) 0.2 games further from the oncoming Kangaroos… – 

Canberra:  “W”, 3 – 3.  (22 PA, .200, .273, .400;  5.7 ip,  2 er, 3.16 ERA).  The ‘Roos continue to struggle to get enough hitting on the field, coming up about 8 PA short again Sunday.  Javier Baez homered and walked, but no one else did much hitting.  On the pitching side, Jake Odirizzi twirled 5 scoreless innings, only to have Ryan Thompson triple chulk all over Jake’s good work.  Still, the Cannies gained 0.1 games on first place, and 0.3 on fifth place, moving a little further into the thick of the race.     

Cottage:  “L”, 6 – 5. (43 PA, .220, .256, .537;  no pitching.)  Not much happened at the Cottage, especially if you were looking for pitching.  What did happen was pretty much confined to slugging.  Trea Turner hit a homer, and Zach McKinstry hit a grand slam.    

Oh, there was Ohtani. 

Shohei disdained the single.  He walked, and stole a base.  Then he doubled.  Then he tripled.  Then he homered, his 25th of the season, tied for second in all of baseball (and the EFL, too).    

Ohtani is only 9th in offensive WAR (3.1), according to Baseball Reference.  EFLer Vlad Guerrero, Jr., leads the lague at 4.2, and Carlos Correa (4.1), Marcus Semien (3.7), Max Muncy (3.7) and Jake Cronenworth (3.4) occupy spots above Ohtani for his offense.  

But Ohtani leads for total WAR (5.6). Guerrero is only 5th on that list, still at 4.2.   

Ohtani is not in the top ten for pitching WAR.  Although the Cascades’ Kevin Gausman is second on that list (4.2 WAR, trailing Zack Wheeler’s 4.6), we don’t dominate the pitching leaders so much. John Means is 7th (3.2), Freddy Peralta is 8th (3.1), and Carlos Rodon is 10th (3.0).     (Someone dropped the ball.  Wade Miley is not on an EFL roster even though he has the 9th most pitching WAR at 3.1.)  

Ok, we’ve gone this far, we might as well look at Defensive WAR, according to BR:   

#1:  JP Crawford           1.5  (OD)

#2:  Ryan McMahon     1.5  (DC)

#4:  Ha-Seung Kim       1.3  (BC)

#5:  Marcus Semien      1.2  (CC)

#7:  Carlos Correa         1.1  (OD)

#8:  Christian Vazquez  1.1  (PA)

#10:  Manuel Margot     0.9  (CK)      

Pittsburgh: W 1, L 1;  8 – 11.   (29 PA, .167, .276, .333;  0.3 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA).  Allegheny pitching was merely a drop in a hot desert Sunday, evaporating on impact, and leaving everything wilted. The just-mentioned Christian Vazquez reminded us he has offensive value, too, by clouting the A’s only home run in two games played, and adding a single, to single-handedly provide half the team’s hits and 75% of the team’s extra bases. The result was a 0.3 gaem slump in the overall pennant race, and a doubling of the gap between the 9th place A’s and the 8th-place Cheese.       

Bellingham:  W 1, L 1, 10 – 10. (33 PA, .267, .333, .533;  6.3 ip, 4 er, 5.71 ERA)  Tyler Mahle struggled to complete 6 innings while allowing 4 earned runs, but the Belly offense picked up the slack to go .500 on the day.  Ronald Acuna Jr and Keston Hiura homered AND doubled to provide half the team’s hits and 100% of the teams extra bases. This left the C’s almost exactly where they were before Sunday’s play:  just the teensiest bit under .500, 16.2 games out of first place.     

Portland: L, 2 – 5.  (34 PA, .179, .324 .250;  11 ip, 7 er, 5.73 ERA)  On the offensive side, pretty much the only good news was the 6 walks the team took, one more than their hits, and only 1 less than their total bases.  I am not going to highlight something like Dylan Carlson’s 1 double in 4 trips, not even though it was the best performance by any Rosebud hitter.  Maybe I can mention Alex Avila, though: 1 for 3 with a double and a walk.    As for the Portly pitchers: our old friend Eric Lauer was the star: 6 ip, 0 er.  But Adbert Alzolay (3 ip, 4 er) an Matt Peacock (2 ip, 3 er) undermined Lauer’s good work.  Probably time to dump those two guys for more Wolverine cast-off.         Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2021

EFL Standings for 2021

Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2021

Today’s post was delayed and complicated by Saturday’s suspended Mariners/White Sox game.  Once the game was finished on Sunday, all the stats were loaded back to Saturday in the Baseball Reference website we are using.  Which means a straight Sunday update does not include the completion of the suspended games.  

Neither Jamie nor I knew for sure what to do, so we went running off to the Emerald City to see the Wizard.  Not THE Wizard, the one on Whidbey.  The other wise guy, the  “Wizard” of IT.  Who sent us off to find a burnt broomstick while he went behind the curtain and added the stats from Sunday’s finish of the suspended game to Saturday, and recalculated Saturday. 

What I will reveal to you now is just the Sunday stats.  The team scores I report will reflect the play during the  completion of the suspended game, including the stats compiled by players in that Sunday morning action, but the players’ stats as I recite them to you will not.   

You will probably never read any commentary on all the wonderful things that they did Saturday in the last 6 innings of the Seattle/Chicago game. But fear not! The all-knowing, all-seeing EFL database knows what happened, and has included it in today’s standings.